Winston Hazel, Toddla T and DJ Q

Emma Warren

A very big welcome Winston Hazel, Toddla T, DJ Q. [applause]

So, this whole Paths Unknown thing, it’s two weekends of celebrations, of music crossing borders, happening here and in London, and it’s kind of all about something you guys have been involved with throughout your whole lives in music, about what happens when you hear things you haven’t heard before, when you go places you haven’t been before, when you meet people you haven’t met before. And I wondered if we could just start by each of you telling us a moment where that happened for you, in terms of your music.

Where are your mics, people?

Winston Hazel

Right, oh, good evening everybody. I’m Winston, in case you didn’t know. So, for me, it was in 1994, going to Jamaica, and hitting the ground running there, and hearing this massive sonic explosion, and being able to reference that right back to Steel City, the kind of industrial sound of the Steel City resonating in the sonic sounds I was hearing in Jamaica.

The thing that hit me immediately was the fact that a lot of the sounds in the bashment that was being played at the time out there sounded right outdoors, without walls, and it kind of resonated with that Sheffield clang sound that we were used to going to bed to, from the industrial east of the city, with the drop hammers hammering out the steel at night, 24 hours a day, and it just felt like I’d landed back home again, but far away, in a very, very hot place.

Emma Warren

So that connection, the sonic connections between places.

Winston Hazel

Yeah.

Emma Warren

One of those things that bring us together. What’s the mic situation over there? Are we passing…

Toddla T

Passing microphone, check. We’ve only got one.

Emma Warren

We’ll do… We can do sharing, you can do sharing.

Toddla T

Yeah, that’s fine. I guess mine was like a lineage of what Winston just experienced, because Sheffield’s quite naturally multi-cultured, which is an absolute joy. Where I grew up is Park Hill, which is just behind the train station, and there was different types of, you know, backgrounds, communities, and races, so you know, you’d always hear different music over the wall, or whatever, of the garden. My next-door neighbors were Jamaican, and whatever, but when I start going to parties in the city, that’s when it really slapped me round the face, and it was Winston and Pipes always DJing, and they would play records that, kind of, you would expect, and then every now and again they’d just go to Jamaica and the sonic was just super-exciting.

But it made sense that the records they’d played all night, before and after, and I just remember being in raves and just hearing these Jamaican records. A lot of the time they didn’t even play vocal versions, it was all about the production, and that to me was the most exciting bit of the night. And still, to me, the palate of what I do today. So it’s thanks to Winston and Pipes, and Parrot, and other people we’ll talk about later, that made me fall in love with this sound that was not in my blood at all. So yeah, there you go.

Emma Warren

Thank you.

DJ Q

You alright guys? Yeah, I think my story’s slightly different to these two cause I’m not from Sheffield, but Sheffield’s played a big part in what I do and what I’m about. I started releasing music when I was young, around 13 years ago, and my first release was getting played in the famous Niche Club in Sheffield, before I’d even gone there. And that was the reason why I ended up going there, and just fell in love with the whole vibe, and, yeah, that’s what brought me to Sheffield, and I’ve been here for years, just doing my thing, man.

Emma Warren

OK, so, we need to know your first Niche night. What happens when you rolled up outside? What happens when you make your way through that doorway?

DJ Q

Wasn’t anything like I expected, to be honest. A lot of people said, “Yeah, Niche is this, Niche is that.” But I got there and it was just vibes from beginning to end, music, everything that I loved hearing, all my friends were there, lots of girls, it was just nice, man.

Emma Warren

So over the course of the next hour, we’re gonna be finding out a little bit more about the sort of Sheffields that each of you inhabited, because they’re different Sheffields, Sheffields that overlap, that feed into each other, but they’re discrete. They’re different.

So, maybe Winston, could you tell us a bit about Sheffield youth clubs?

Winston Hazel

Sheffield youth clubs, obviously an essential part of growing up in any city, not just in Sheffield, but obviously, when you don’t have access to music because the airwaves aren’t playing it, or maybe because you can’t even get into the nightclubs, youth clubs became like a vital part of your existence as a young person growing up. And what started to happen in the city was you got to find out where the youth clubs that got to play the best music. So it’d be like Rowlinson, Hurlfield, Dobcroft, all these different places where just basically, some of them had got better kit than others, you were able to take your own music up and play it. So, I was at Hurlfield youth club, I was playing soul, funk and disco, and at Dobcroft youth club, which had a very black following, they were playing lots of jazz funk and jazz up there. And you just had, you got to know where the best pockets of music were in the city.

And then over time, because it were only two pence to get everywhere in Sheffield on bus, I don’t know if anybody knew that, but you could go anywhere for two p, and that lasted for a right long time, trust me. So you could get on the bus, you could go and visit some of these places, and then you’d start to make connections with different people across the city, which is really empowering as a young person, because you realize it’s not just you and a couple of your mates, there’s lots of other people.

And you start to kind of gel together, so, the youth club culture, I think for me, was one of the reasons that I knew that I could find something other than what I was expected to do when I left school. So, it was, for me, it was looking at music, I didn’t know how I’d be able to make that into a career in any way, shape, or form, but as time went on, no matter what I tried, I always ended up back in music. And I think the youth club culture was probably pivotal in that choice for me, from quite an early experience.

Emma Warren

So you’ve got a load of music with you, could you just give us a little spin through some youth club sounds?

Winston HAzel

OK, so youth-y days were me trying to play… It was me, playing my music, funk music, to a predominantly white audience at Hurlfield youth club on Manor, right, and when they’d say, “What that you playing tonight, Winnie?” I’d say, “I’m playing funk.” And they’d say, “Don’t you mean punk?” So, that’s what we were up against, basically. And this isn’t particularly one of the tracks that I was playing at that time, but it’s of… I’m not, when I say funk, I’m not talking about the Jackson sisters and James Brown, and that kind of whole rare groove feel, it was a much blacker sound than that, it was very sonically improved due to the equipment that was used to produce it. And this is a good example of that kind of sound.

(music: Mr. Groove – “One Way”)

So that, Mr. Groove “One Way,” for me, it was an iconic tune, because it epitomizes what I loved about funk, and it was the P-Funk element, a punkified, funky element, so it was sporadic, it was random, you would kind of hear stuff that you wouldn’t… You’d hear that for the first time in the early ’80s and think to yourself, “Music can’t get any better.” Because you can hear how superior that recording is.

And then, sort of, because I wasn’t a DJ at that time, we just liked to collect music but I ended up just playing it to my mates, we played the music so we could go out to dance at the youth clubs, essentially. So we were all dancers, and it was all about foot working, jazz-fusion kind of style, and we went from fast-fusion to half-stepping that, so it was almost like freeze moves. I can’t explain it, I’d have to show you, but I’m not gonna do that.

But anyway, yeah, so that sound kind of transpired into, it kind of took the convention instrumentation of jazz funk to another level, from America, as far as we’re concerned. And it stripped it right back down, lots of space and sonic punctuation, and just great lyrics, lyrics that were really inspiring, so this is another example, anyway. [plays song too quickly] Sorry.

(music: Chocolate Milk – “Who’s Getting It Now”)

So that’s obviously taken the whole love theme to a different level, and just kind of, putting some serious funk in your back when you hear that. Essentially that’s kind of the disco groove, and I think the new electronic instrumentation that came around allowed that sound to mutate into something that was other than disco, so, for the dancers, that was dance heaven, basically.

Emma Warren

So, I want to ask you about the dancers, because there’s been many times in our music culture where the dancers and the DJs, the dancers and the music makers, have worked together to move the music forward, and I wanna know about what the relationship in Sheffield was like between the dancers and the music makers. We know Manchester, people like [A Guy Called] Gerald were dancers, and the reason that he made some of the music he made was because of his background understanding about feet as much as understanding about beats. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Winston Hazel

The dancing element of it came way before all of that, A Guy Called Gerald, in the early house sound of the UK, so 1981, ’82, ’83, ’84 the jazz funk all-dayer circuit, which was a national scene, would produce these events that went, would happen on a month or bi-monthly basis in places like Birmingham Powerhouse, Nottingham Rock City, what’s now the Abbeydale Picture House on Abbeydale Road, and various places in London.

There was probably seven or eight really good venues. And what used to happen is, as a dancer, I would organize a coach from Sheffield, 53-seater, really crappy old diesel coach and just pack it, take the Sheffield posse down. Sheffield posse would go with a bag full of clothes, with the intention of dancing for 12 hours and about four different... Four changes of clothes in the bag.

The experience of dancers was one that drove... One of the DJs, Cut Jonathan, and another DJ, Colin Curtis, used to go to America and get bands like... Jazz bands like Airto to cut extended 12" players specifically for the UK jazz funk market. These versions weren’t available in the US. They first landed here. They got played, became massive for the jazz fusion guys, and it was coupled with... The dancing brought the style, the fashion, so you would obviously want to look and feel the part, so people were cutting off bits of clothes so they could feel cool, and ripping jeans and putting zips up here and bleaching one leg and it was all... Every city had its own style, and when you arrived at these venues, there would be like... One corner would be the Sheffield corner, and everybody knew that every venue Sheffield would be in that corner. Birmingham, the convicts and their dancers... We didn’t really have a crew name but eventually we became Smack 19. Every city had its area and its own style of dancing, and then we used to put those to the test on the dancefloor, and it wasn’t a way of... We didn’t dance to stop fighting. You just dance. There was no kind of violence in any of this at all. You’d pit fashion and clothing and dancefloor moves against each city and that’s kind of...

That kind of sparked an explosion in people in the UK making music for those dancers, and when that scene sort of died off, those people on that scene were coming to our club in Sheffield, Jive Turkey, because we had the only dedicated jazz room in the country that was dedicated to jazz fusion, Batucada, all those kind of styles, which was quite specific, really, so, we had quite a large following for a very long time in the city that filled the gap for all the dancers across the country. Rugby, Nottingham, Birmingham, everywhere.

Emma Warren

The whole thing about dance, you can look at things like Chicago and footwork you can see that’s still alive and well in other places, and it’s a really important part of how our culture developed, but Q, I’m wondering, can you tell us a bit about how dance relates to bassline? Where are the dancers on your scene?

DJ Q

Who knows about the shotgun dance? [laughter] That was a big dance at the bassline clubs back in the day… But, on a serious note it’s like, people went out to dance to this new kind of music that was hitting the cities, and going to the clubs and hearing that music, that’s when people got into the sound and, thinking, “I like this music. I want to get into it like...” A lot of the MCs from bassline started off as grime MCs, and because it was going to the clubs that everyone was going to, enjoying the music, they wanted to get onto that music as well. Same with producers. That’s how the scene grows and stuff like that.

Toddla T

I’m kind of jumping forward a little bit here, but I remember when this record dropped, it was super inspiring for me. It’s MIA’s “Galang,” and this was produced by Ross Orton who is a Sheffield producer. Not many people know that. It was also produced by a guy called Steve Mackey, he was the bass player in Pulp. And when I heard this track, it just sounded like Winnie, Ross, and that other guy Parrot, and some woman from London on top that everyone thought was amazing, but really, I haven’t got the instrumental. I’m kind of gutted I didn’t bring the instrumental. The instrumental is pure steel. Sheffield never got the props for this record that launched a career for someone super successful, more props, more love to her, but this was made on London Road opposite a chicken shop on two speakers, Tannoy Reveals, about 100 pound, a desk that was so shit, quote unquote, that the only way to use it was to rag everything into the red [laughter] to the point where I’ve got all this sophisticated equipment in my studio and I’ve still got that same desk, that I bought from someone in Sheffield, to rag into the red, because I can’t get the same sound.

When this came out, it was interesting because I’d heard these records that Winnie was playing and Pipes was playing and this was mad because it was like, “Wow. There’s more people out there that can understand what we’re up to.” And at the time she was the hot girl so it was like everyone wanted a piece of Sheffield’s sonic all of a sudden. And the vocal is debatable whether you like it or not, but when it comes to... Can you cue it up for me, please, Winnie? When it comes to the production on this one, this for me is pure Sheffield.

(music: MIA – “Galang”)

Emma Warren

Tell us about the Originators then, because this is stuff from back then, but this stuff is not over, is it. What is the Originators and what’s happening tomorrow night?

Winston Hazel

The Originators is an idea that… When this sort of... The bleep period, is what it’s known as now, the Warp years, there were a series of artists that made tracks for that period, Forgemasters, Unique 3, Nightmares on Wax, LFO, Altern-8... Not necessarily Altern-8 in this area but we’ve shed one half of our outfits, each one of those units, and come together to form what we call the Originators because we just wanted to explore the idea that there may be another ten years or something left in the opportunities that this music could give.

Obviously, we hear a lot of the new music that’s being played by people like Toddla and Q at the minute, and it still resonates with what we were doing back then, so we still feel like we’ve got a bit of life left in us. We thought we’d come together to create a series of tracks where we’re passing between each other in the crew, remix them up and put them out on Originator Sounds record label and then probably tour the idea with our own soundsystem in non-licensed venues, so that’s what we thought we’d try and do. We’ve got a few dates next year in Europe and the UK, and tomorrow night we’re doing a really small intimate place in Sheffield called Music Junky. It’s about 150 capacity, just to test the soundsystem in a small environment, because we’re not necessarily going to do big venues. We’re going to do a lot of small places. But also don’t forget this big jam on here tomorrow night as well. [laughter]

Emma Warren

Oh yeah, that. So, Toddla, do you want to tell us about some of the collaborations you’ve got going with Sheffield artists?

Toddla T

Boy, well Coco... Coco’s here somewhere, ain’t he? That’s a artist from Sheffield. Everyone thinks we met here but we didn’t. We met in London, which is kind of funny, and he moved down here and I always rated him, “I need another Sheffielder in each studio,.” So we work. He shares the studio now. Before that, though, it was like the leg-ups that I got from local... Not really artists, it was more producers and engineers. There’s a guy called Chris Morris who lives two doors up from my mom now. He took me into a studio one day. I learned more there than I did a year at Leeds College of Music, no disrespect to the College of Music, everyone do your education. It’s a joy. But they actually…

Emma Warren

As Aretha Franklin used to put on her records, “Stay in school.”

Toddla T

Exactly, there you go.

Emma Warren

Or don’t. It’s your choice.

Toddla T

And then Ross Orton, who made the “Galang” record, same thing, he took me to his studio, and everyone really helps out and is collaborative and it’s not.. There’s moments of competitiveness but it’s a very much, “I’ll lend you my synth, you borrow my headphones,” type of place, and those key moments were so important to me to earn my craft.

Robert Gordon who made those records at Winston lives on my mom’s road and he used to mix my records and give me tips about sonics. He used to master my records. Everyone was close and willing to help, and it was such a great place for that reason.

Emma Warren

It’d be good to hear from both of you, actually, about how you see Sheffield music as adding to grime, what Sheffield music is bringing to grime, and what grime, the kind of intersections between the different musics that you’re involved with.

Toddla T

For me, it’s funny, because a lot of the old Forgemasters and Robert Gordon productions, like “A Track With No Name” that we have to play today, the melody’s like a grime tune to me, and that was what, ’89? Something like that. And then the bass-heavier stuff, and then when Wiley came with “Eskimo,” it sounded a bit like Robert in a weird way, and it wasn’t that foreign and that’s why we embraced it so much. The darker side of bassline obviously is the cousin of grime. MC culture on that, we’ve always had our own version of it. We don’t necessarily give to grime or take from grime but I feel like there’s a synergy that’s unrehearsed and when grime kicked off and Wiley was making beats and Slimzee was on radio, I was like, “Rah this don’t sound that different from what these lot do down the road,” even though it’s like so different in a way. So I feel like we kind of done it anyway without meaning to you know?

DJ Q

Yeah I think it has a sound. I think Sheffield’s got a unique vibe that nowhere else can touch because that you can get a grime MC, but put him on bass and he’ll sound just as sick as it was on grime and stuff like that. I think a lot of that gets overlooked because Sheffield is not a place where grime comes from, but there’s a lot of talented people that can make noise and grime looks at the stuff that you did with Coco and that was ringing bells in London. So it just needs more people like Toddla to get involved and just show people that yeah there are actually is loads of sick people here.

emma Warren

So tell us briefly about you and Flava D and Royal-T.

DJ Q

My two mates. Funny that story actually because we’d been friends for ages. I use to be on 1Xtra and I used to play their songs and we just linked up thorough having a mutual respect of each other. We was in the studio one day, funnily enough it was Red Bull Studios, and we made a track, the first track we ever made together and it’s called “Vibsing Ting.” I’ll play a bit now.

(music: TQD – “Vibsing Ting”)

We actually made this song at the end of 2014 and yeah as I said we were just in the studio together. We made a track and then we left it for a few months and then we thought, “You know what? We actually need to put this online to let people know that we’ve done something together.” And rather than put DJ Q and Royal-T and Flava D, we used the letters from each of our names and we tried every combination. So first it was TDQ, QDT, and TQD was the one that looked the best. So TQD. I think it was “Day & Night” that we actually put online first and then “Vibsing Ting.” And a few booking requests started coming through. And we were like, “Yeah we’ll one booking, fair enough.”

So we did it and from then more requests started coming through and then TQD actually became a thing. I think we did the first show together in 2015 at the end of the year. 2016 we did a few festivals and put out an album beginning of this year. Up until this time now we’ve just been doing shows.

emma Warren

If you were going to break it down like who brings what?

DJ Q

I think we all bring a unique vibe and it all comes together nicely as one. Because what Royal-T from Southampton, Flava D is from Bornemouth, I’m from Huddersfield and we all just bring all our different influences together and it just makes one big melting pot of vibes man.

emma Warren

I want to ask you a little bit more about klang. You know bleep or klang whatever you want to call it, can you all give me a sense of where this Sheffield klang, this bleep, is in the music that you represent?

Winston Hazel

The Sheffield klang, which I think is a term that Pipes coined isn’t it? Anyway, it sounds amazing it’s with a “k” And it basically comes from that thing where… If you speak to any musician in the city they’ll say that their music reflects the industrial heartbeat of the city. And what that means is if you’re too young to remember, again, the drop hammer is from the Don Valley when they use to ricochet 24 hours a day. The sound used to bounce up the Don Valley and bounce off the hills and so every hill that you heard it from had a different resonant sound. I think it was like a 700-ton press, the drop hammer in Don Valley at one point, when that used to go off, you could feel it in the air when it was warm enough.

My dad used to work in the steel works and a lot of our parents use to work in the steel works so they bring that smell home, you’d hear that sound at night time, you’d go to sleep to it, you’d wake up to it and it just stayed with you. And even though no one ever tried to replicate that, whenever you went into a studio to make music it had recognition to that. You’re a product of your environment and your music as well and that’s basically what the Sheffield klang refers to.

Toddla T

I mean by the time I was making music most of the steel industry was done, but the aesthetic of factories and warehouses was very important. My first studio space was 30 pounds a month and my current studio probably get me a coffee for that. Where we were opposite was a guy who made doors and stuff and it was just noisy. “Bang, ding, bonk,” everywhere, every studio you went to. Even though the steel industry was gone there was still that feeling of the factories and industry.

And I can hear it in the music. I mean Winnie is probably a better person to talk to about it than me, the dancehall thing and the Jamaican thing at the time bizarrely sounded similar, so to fuse them sounds was normal. When I was going to those raves that’s why them records made sense together.

DJ Q

Do you know what?

Toddla T

What?

DJ Q

That sound in bassline yeah? I been searching for a word for that sound for ages, klang is the best sound. It’s the best description. It’s almost metal sound. When bassline drops, most of the dubs right now it’s like a metal [makes bass sound] that kind of vibe. That’s definitely a Sheffield thing and it translates everywhere man.

Audience Member

Obviously we’ve spoken about Sheffield’s rich history, house and techno, acid and the rest, bassline. But where do you see the future musical direction of it over the next five years?

DJ Q

Um that depends on you guys really. What do you want to see in the city for the next couple years? [laughter]

Audience Member

So back to me?

DJ Q

Yeah back to you.

Audience Member

It’s just in terms of what scenes you see the city enriching themselves in the most. I see at the moment there’s a lot of techno going on. But personally what do you guys see coming out now?

Toddla T

I mean I’ve not lived here for years so this is a bit of an outside perspective. But in terms of venues and infrastructure I fell like Sheff is healthier than ever. The ethos of the warehouse party and… There’s a lot of legitimate ones now, which is safer. They’re not going to get shut down and that’s a great breeding ground. You have a lot of techno, so that has become a sort of hub for that. And it’s just nourished and I think that the youngers than me will take this lineage and do their version of it and that’s exciting man. I can’t wait to see what happens here. And with the warehouse spaces and the places like that, it theory you’re going to get some super exciting music and very uncompromised in a good way. That’s the way I see it from an outside perspective.

Winston Hazel

From seeing a few cycles happen in the city, my interpretation is that Sheffield is currently in a stabilizing period where there is acceptance of all the cultures that have culminated to make the city as much of focal point as it is currently. We’re accepting it first of all in the city. Because I think for a very long time we’ve been very good, to anyone coming from the outside saying, “Man there’s nothing happening here it’s rubbish.” But I think we’re accepting that now and we’re learning how to exploit our own talents for the first time. But I think a lot of stuff that’s come before up until now has been borne out of need and desperation in a lot of ways so we’ve been through a lot of tough times nationally and locally. Sheffield’s always been the underdog as far as cities are concerned and it’s always struggled to find its own identity and USP. I think it’s found it, but it’s not the best place to be able to exploit it. We’re in a process of learning how to bring what we’ve got to the rest of the world so that we can benefit from it as much as the rest of the world. Something that we’ve not learned how to do yet.

So I think in terms of what’s going to come next depends on the environment that we end up in. There’s a lot of clubs shutting down at the moment, if people allow this stuff to happen then you’re left with this kind of sterile environment where there’s no breeding ground for creativity. And everyone’s getting pushed into these kind of niche little environments where all the artists live there and these people live there. We almost have to create the need ourselves and think outside the box, live outside our comfort zone more often. That’s what generates a need to create new types of music, because music generates itself from your experience. It’s hard to sit down and say, “I’m going to do this,” and it works out well unless you’re Toddla, he does quite a lot of that.

When you start to organize your music in that way it can stop being a movement, it’s your thing, and the movement happens when your environment that you live in forces the music out of the environment that you live in, if that makes sense.

Audience Member

My question is to Winston. I would love to hear a little bit more about the actual soundsystems themselves that you used and played on, and how those have changed? Obviously the music has changed through the time, but how the systems have changed as well.

Winston Hazel

Oh, gosh. Immensely the systems have changed. When we used to do Jive Turkey, we used to use this rock guy called... It wasn’t even a soundsystem, it was called Gabbadon PA, and it was a rocker. Because we couldn’t get enough kick together the regular soundsystems couldn’t really translate a lot of the early electronic music, because they were very focused on bringing out certain frequencies in music, because a lot of the music, what was coming around and new electronic music was quite full on on the mid-range element. If you took too much away from it, because it wasn’t mastered well, in the best way, you’d lose some of the important elements of it, so you ended up having to take out all the really crucial sub-sonics, so it would play without feedback. So, we ended up using these rock soundsystems, like for Jive Turkey [laughs]. And it was loud enough, but you’re playing in a classical ballroom, on a sprung dance floor that’s made for ballroom dancing. And any bass that went through this ricocheted through, bounced off a wall, and came back through the turntable, so, it was dreadful. The parties that we did, the house parties, were basically, “Who’s got a hi-fi?” “I’ve got some. Bring your speakers down and we’ll string ’em up.” One deck. Red light. That was it. So, it wasn’t really about the quality of the sound, it was about the gathering of the people. So the more hotter and the sweatier the environment, the better the party was, cause you could forget about the fact that some of the tracks sounded really, really shit. [laughter]

And then, fast forward quite a few years, to the Kabal years in particular, soundsystems had become more sophisticated... Or PAs, which are now soundsystems, had become more sophisticated, and access to them had become affordable. So, in particular, the Kabal experience, the soundsystem was probably a third if not half of the experience of the event. And people knew… You could play anything on there, you could play Arctic Monkeys and it would sound so bad, you’d be into Arctic Monkeys even if you hated indie music.

And it got to that level, so, you could drop music. The music what was getting made in the studios was getting made because they knew the quality of the soundsystem it was getting played on. And this is at a time when MP3s was massive, and it was difficult to get a good balance in terms of... I was playing MP3s, and I couldn’t understand why you get that really high pitch frequency when you played music out loud, it’s cause it was being squashed down so much that you just got lots of white noise in there.

So we went back to basics and stripped it all back. Less is more in terms of soundsystem. A few blokes, some powerful amps, and also the right aesthetic. So two sides, one stack, one stack, because music’s basically as stereo, so I think when you see there’s two speakers you hear it and feel it the right way. So all those things play a really important part in terms of a soundsystem.

We went above and beyond to make sure that that was one of the main threads that run through the Kabal parties, because we suffered in silence with the fact that we didn’t have that during the Jive Turkey period.

Emma Warren

Thank you. Any more questions?

Audience Member

This question’s directed to Hugh. He’s just sat there relaxing so far. I’ll ask you a question.

DJ Q

Whaa gwan?

Audience Member

You’re good bro? It’s been a while. My question relates to bassline, and the heyday in ’07, ’08, ’09... It used to be very family orientated, with the guys that made music and DJed. It was very family orientated in a sense of everyone used to go there, and it was everyone were boys. Now, with the new producers that’s coming through, how do you think the scene’s gonna evolve?

DJ Q

In all honestly, it’s two separate scenes. Obviously the scene now is influenced from back then, but this is a different thing now, and I think that’s something that people don’t realize. It’s a new set of listeners. A new set of producers. A new set of DJs. And I think people that was into it back in the day are coming to it now and thinking that, “Yeah, it’s all the same,” and stuff when it’s different. I think it’s hard for people to get their heads around that. But it’s how many years now? It’s like 2009, to 2017. That’s eight, nine years now, isn’t it? So a lot’s changed. A lot has changed. But now I think the sound’s more widely accepted on a country level, and European level. Even down to America, places like China and stuff, so it can only get better I reckon.

Emma Warren

What’s the American interest and connection with bassline? How are they viewing it?

DJ Q

At the moment, we’ve got guys like AC Slater and Sinden out there pushing the Night Bass stuff, and they’re getting a pretty big following out there at the big festivals and stuff, and Night Bass has an event that runs once a month in LA that is actually sick. You’re out there and you forget you’re in America, cause the vibe’s like a UK vibe. Everyone’s on it. Everyone knows about rewinds and stuff like that. The producers have got all the fresh dubs from all the UK producers and they’re releasing music monthly from UK producers and worldwide producers as well, just all pushing towards that one bassline sound.

Audience Member

Just so you don’t get left out Toddla, question for you. Back in the day, I used to work in an office with your mum.

Toddla T

Are you serious? [laughter]

Audience Member

Yeah. Yeah.

Toddla T

Ras, big up yourself. Maaaad. Although I don’t know what’s coming next though.

Audience Member

Yeah, exactly. [laughter] And she used to roll in on a Monday morning... And this is when you’re at King Ted’s.

Toddla T

Yeah.

Audience Member

And I really distinctly remember her coming in one, and she was just exasperated, “That boy. That boy.” And she says, “He wants to be a DJ. What sort of a job is a DJ?” And she just was chuntering about it all day.

Toddla T

Yeah.

Audience member

What’s she saying now?

Toddla T

What? Boy, that is incredible. I didn’t see that one coming. I nearly brought me dad down actually, but I knew he’d cause a madness, so I didn’t. Obviously, I didn’t know that side of it, cause they backed me so much, I thought that they were like, “Oh yeah, go for it”, but yeah [laughter]. Shit, we’ve got some conversations to have when I go home.

No, big up mom and dad because honestly they were so cool. I remember her actually saying to me one day something like, “When’s this gonna actually pay off?” Do you know what I mean? I was paying 30 pound a month on this studio, and then the next week a tune came out, and it was on MTV Base and then she got it. And ever since then... Well, she was cool before that, that was the start for her understanding it, but, yeah.

Audience Member

I guess you were only about 14, 15 when she was cracking on about this, and…

Toddla T

Yeah, yeah, no, I was. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s incredible.

Audience Member

You were jumping ship to go clubbing with Winnie.

Toddla T

Yeah. Blame him.

Emma Warren

So, Q on that whole parents just don’t understand tip, tell us.

DJ Q

Wow. My thing’s totally different from Toddla’s. Basically, my dad’s Ghanaian African and my mom’s Jamaican as well. Being black is like university, school, everything... “Why do you want to do music for? There’s nothing in music.” So I was doing music. I remember I left uni after one year to just pick up the music thing full time, and I got kicked out. And it was mad because they knew the passion I had about music but at the same time, music was just this thing that I used to do in my spare time and it wasn’t serious to them I think.

The first time they actually realized that the music thing was serious was when one of their friends came up and said, “Oh, my daughter just went to a club that your son was playing at.” And then when someone else realized it, and they knew someone else saw me as a professional, that’s when they just embraced it and it’s alright now. She tells all her work friends that I’m a DJ, so it’s all good.

Emma Warren

Do you have any more questions?

Toddla T

Wasn’t it your cousin or something, you had a cousin who did bleep innit? L-Double or something?

DJ Q

Yeah, L-Double, he used to work with Unique 3 like in the end of their stuff, I think after like “Rhythm Takes Control” and that. And then he started DJing and producing drum & bass. He owned Flex Records, and yeah. That for me was a big influence, cause my mom used to listen to reggae and stuff, and he had all the samplers and the synths and stuff. I used to go to his house, and it was like, “This guy’s actually doing something different, and it’s more interesting than seeing my dad playing CDs,” or songs that I only think, “OK this guy’s playing some sick songs.” But at the same time, I couldn’t tell him that, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m really excited about this.” I’d just have to pretend, “Yeah, yeah, it’s alright.” Yeah. You know what it’s like, innit?

Audience Member

Hiya. Oh my God, my voice. Yeah, this one’s for Toddla. So really, congratulations on Foreign Light.

Toddla T

Thank you.

Audience Member

It’s a really good album. I just wanted to talk about how you got to know Andrea Martin, cause, she’s a real voice.

Toddla T

Oh yeah. Yeah. So Andrea Martin is a woman that vocaled my latest album, for those that don’t know anyway. I went to New York to do a DJ gig and I had a day off the day after and then I flew home the day after. Cause I was so obsessed with rap music growing up. I used to listen to SCR, which was a pirate radio station in Sheffield... Where did it broadcast from? Was it Norfolk Park? Yeah... And there was a rap show on that. I used to listen to [Westwood] and so my first love before I discovered what Winnie was showing me and that was hip-hop.

So, when I went New York, I was like, “Right, day off. Going to work with a rapper! Sick! New York.” No one gave a shit! So I was like, “Right, fuck, I need to work with someone. I’ve booked a studio,” and Switch, who’s a producer and friend of mine was like, “I’ve got this lady called Andrea Martin.” [DJ Q says something] Yeah. Switch had a song with her called “I Still Love You.” And I was like, “But I’ve got loads of singers back home, whatever.” I went to studio and it was weird, it was like some spirit came in with her and I was like, “This woman’s incredible.” And she got in the booth... And the way she writes the songs is bizarre because a lot of people hear the song and they pen it or they do voice notes. She can’t hear it before she goes in the booth, so every time I was making tracks, she’d go outside so she couldn’t hear it. She’d be like, “Is it ready yet?” And I’d be like, “Yeah,” and then she’d come in, put the headphones on, play the track and she’d write it there and then. Like a rapper or a dancehall artist would do. [DJ Q says something] Like the melody is… [DJ Q says something] No. She’d play the tune and then in the booth it’d just come out. I was like, “How’d you even know the key?” It’s only a drum pattern and then she just patterned loads of demos and I was just like, “This is incredible. I want this lady to vocal my record,” and then we did the rest via the net and yeah, it’s been an absolute joy working with her. She’s amazing. That was that.

Audience Member

Yeah, man. This one’s for Toddla. Basically, when did you see your career start to take a turn? In Sheffield, or when you moved from Sheffield?

Toddla T

It was in Sheffield. It was funny because I was so obsessed with being a DJ, as my man knows, from telling my mum from 14. I was working at same time. I was working shops and supermarkets and whatnot and I right wanted it so bad and then the day it actually happened, I kind of panicked because everything was set up so perfect here. I had a £30 studio, I had the security of my mum and dad here. I could get advice and watch these guys DJ and all of sudden it’s like, “Right! Go and DJ in Barcelona,” or whatever and I was like, “Shit!” There’s only 25 of us here that like the music we do, why do they want it in wherever? And it were right weird because I’d been building up for it for years and then I was just like, “Oh!” I was super kind of, I suppose you could say in-confident about it and then I was hustling and it was happening and then the only reason I actually moved to London was because my partner was there and I was coming back on the train, just to get clean pants…

Audience Member

Ah OK.

Toddla T

And it were like, “Fuck this! I’ve got to move down there now.” But there was that moment of, probably 2008, when I was like, “I can’t physically work in a shop, see my friends, see my parents, go to these raves and do music.” So, I just cut... And yeah, I’m so blessed. Again, it’s all from this lineage we’re talking about right now. I still try and carry that everywhere I go. Like sometimes, when I’m panicking and no-one’s DJing, I think, “What would Winnie do?” Or, “What would Pipes do?” It’s weird. I can’t get it out of my blood.

So yeah, again, give thanks to the Winstons and the Pipeses and the Parrots and everyone before me because I think... What we’ve talked about today, we’ve just touched the sides of something so unexplored and so brilliant and yeah, it’s just a joy. So big up Red Bull as well, for letting us share it a bit because it’s kind of an untapped story in history. It’s mad.

Audience Member

This is Winston. Or my dad. A lot of the time, I hear a lot of people coming to me and telling me about Park Hill back in the day. House parties at your mum’s. Can you tell us about that?

Winston Hazel

So, Hyde Park? Sorry. Yeah, OK.

Audience Member

Yeah, Park Hill, Hyde Park.

Winston Hazel

Hyde Park flats. Well renowned in the city. The cities in the sky. A bit of a... I think at the time they became a listed building for one of the most iconic high rise structures in the world I think, in terms of its design... But anyway it was a very close community and to be quite honest, I don’t even really know how it... It’s one of those things that just... It just happened and my mum was alright with it. My dad worked in the steelworks, he didn’t really have much to say about anything in terms of what I was or I wasn’t doing. He did what he did for the family and then left the rest to my mum to sort out. So, she was quite happy to just say... Not push me in one direction or the other but if I came and told her I was going to be a DJ or I was going to be working the theater, she’d just say, “Yeah, OK, that’s good” and just let it happen.

So, I had the luxury of being able to explore lots and lots of different avenues and no matter what I did... Air cadets, working with thespians in the theater industry, I did so many different things... No matter what I tried, I always ended up coming back to music because I couldn’t find anything where I could just be myself and with music I didn’t have to turn myself on, it just happened naturally. So, I suppose if anything, coming from Jamaica, which is a music... Music is ingrained, it’s first nature. She probably understood the importance of that, in terms of keeping people together because they needed to keep the West Indian community together in the UK when they came over during Windrush. So, they understood the importance of music in that sense. So, she obviously realized that it was something that would be able to keep me balanced and in a good place, in a country where we weren’t necessarily being accepted at that time.

So, it kept me close to home. So, if I wanted to do a party at home, she allowed me to do it, to bring people back. Whether it be to just sit down and play music on my Amstrad hi-fi or eventually, later on, we used to use the soundsystem... Which was a 3k soundsystem from Fon Studios, we managed to get about six people to drag that rig up to the top floor of the flats and put that in our flat and we probably had about 150 people turn up.

In fact, the party started, I went down to Fargate and I met everybody on Fargate who was coming to the party and I stood at the bottom and I said, “If you’re coming to party, follow me,” and all the shops just emptied out and this is late at night and it was a stream of people, all the way down from Fitzalan Square, up to Hyde Park flats. People going, “Is it on this floor? Is it on that floor?” And anyway, this party went off and it was off the scale. But the interesting thing about it was, in a working class community, it was acceptable to make... Everything was okay because we generated inclusivity as children and I think that carried forward for quite a long time. Especially in the Hyde Park flats, which was kind of left to rot, to a degree.

So, we made our own entertainment. I’d made a bit of a name for myself anyway in Sheffield, so people knew what I did and they allowed me to kind of... Talking about it now it allowed me to express myself massively throughout that whole period. So, I’m really eternally grateful to my mum and the people that we lived around because there was never any animosity or upset caused by the big parties what we did on there.

I actually want to play something that was really pivotal in terms of the change, in terms of what came back from Jamaica, actually. So, you can hear about the sonic representation of Sheffield in Jamaica, which kind of blew me and Raif, my partner for Kabal, away when we went there and we hit the ground and we were like, “Oh my God, this is like Sheffield in Jamaica!” And we came back and it completely changed the dynamic and the sound of the city at a time when trip-hop was really, really big and we brought this back, this heartbeat rhythm track and it just set Sheffield on fire after that.

(music: Mad House Productions – “Heartbeat riddim”)

That’s what I call liquid riddim track and for me that was the sound that changed everything about how I DJd and actually, that particular sound called the heartbeat riddim track, which we brought back from Jamaica, that was the first time anybody in Sheffield had heard anything like that.

That allowed me to try slowing down house music for the first time. So, from hearing that, I pitched everything down to about minus four, just so that I could start to fit ragga riddim tracks into it like that and it completely changed the sound of ragga, so at minus four, house and ragga start to fuse and if you start to drop instrumentals like that together, they start to sound like house. Try it.

Emma Warren

Once again, an extremely huge, massive thank you, Winston, Toddla T, DJ Q. [applause] And thank you.